The Cartesian Coordinate Shift
by becauseimsunny
Summary: Sheldon is sick. Because his friends are busy with girls and Penny was on her way to New Jersey with Leonard (or maybe they had learned how to avoid sick Sheldon), Sheldon calls Amy for help. Shamy being JUST friends (or something). Set after 09x09 events.


For the Shamies! (and mostly for my own satisfaction because BBT is on hiatus)

Warning: This is a little bit OOC.

The Cartesian Coordinate Shift

Friends.

All his friends have gone. Penny and Leonard are on their way to New Jersey so Penny can meet his family. Sheldon could not, for the world, fathom what got into Leonard's mind. Beverly would surely freak out, Sheldon thinks, as he shakes his head.

Bernadette and Howard and Raj and Emily are on a double date. And even if they were here, Sheldon won't entrust himself with incompetent hands. Sure, Bernadette might be able to compete with Mrs Wolowitz's magical caring, he still shivered at the thought of Bernadette taking care of him. She was a little monster and it sometimes creeps him out how similar she is with Wolowitz's mother. Now, there was a truly incapable human being, Wolowitz. He was incapable of taking care of himself and Sheldon was no exception to that incapacity. Koothrappali grew up in a house full of servants so it could be fairly assumed that he had no experience taking care of a sick person, thus, wouldn't know how to. And Emily? Well, she's a dermatologist who likes touching and cutting people open. If she applies VapoRub on his perfectly flawless chest, it'll only be a matter of time before she transfers her confused feelings from Koothrappali to Sheldon. Plus, he doesn't like her red hair.

 _Hachoo!_

Sheldon sniffs after wiping the snoot off his nose. Murky yellow. Not good. He picks up his iPhone and stares at the picture of the only person he can think of. Her picture had been displayed there since the past hour while Sheldon argued with himself on the pros and cons of asking Amy Farrah Fowler over to take care of him.

For the life of him, Sheldon found forty-three reasons why it isn't advisable to ask Amy, the very core of which was they have already broken up. She was no longer bound by the Relationship Agreement to take care of him. Fortunately, he found three good reasons in favor of his cause.

He presses dial and there's the ring at the other side of the line.

"Hello?" That was Amy Farrah Fowler's voice.

Sheldon feels his chest contract. Not good. His flu must have gotten worse.

"Hi, Dr. Fowler," he nervously whispers. "First of all, I want you to know that this is not a booty call."

Amy, a little but surprised, checks to see who the caller was. She had, in a moment of sadness, deleted Sheldon's number. However, smart as she was, and perhaps because he was too important, his number was perfectly ingrained in her brain. "Sheldon, even if you knew what a booty call is, I have learned not to expect one from you."

"Well that's kind of discriminating coming from you," Sheldon replies dejectedly.

Amy lets out an exasperated sigh. "Why are you calling?"

"I am sick and I have _two_ irrefutable reasons that led me to this phone call," he begins. He sneezes a noseful of snoot before continuing. "First, even if I know that you are not _that_ kind of doctor, there's no denying you're the most capable person with whom I could entrust my well-being."

Not this again, Amy laments to herself. She had just been over the bargaining stage and was now nearly finished with the stages of grief. Sheldon doing and saying these kinds of things from time to time makes it harder for her to move on. If there was conclusive proof of the Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence, this was it. It's like being in an eternal loop of bargaining.

"What about Leonard?"

"Oh, he's away," Sheldon sighs. "He'd much rather go to New Jersey to introduce his wife, who's only been living with him for a couple of months, to his family rather than take care of his best buddy who's been with him since 2003."

"Well, if you had your own wife…" Amy's voice fades. She was going to pull-off a classic sarcasm statement to inform Sheldon that if he had a wife, he'd know why Leonard was doing all those things. But all of a sudden she remembered how she had realized on that Thanksgiving, the one she had spent with Sheldon, that no matter how difficult he was, everything was easier with him around. She has a PhD from Harvard, but she was too stupid to realize that.

"Well, if I had a wife, I bet you'd be gritting your teeth for breaking up with me and, as a result, breaking my heart," Sheldon whines at the other line. "But I believe we have gone past that."

"Ahuh," she swallowed back a sob. "I heard you met a girl from a dating site."

"Yes, what about her?"

So what Bernadette told her was true. Amy so wished she could hang up, but she found herself wanting to hear more of Sheldon's voice at the same time.

"Why don't you call her? Try to hang out."

"Hm, I could. But I slammed the door at her. Now, with you making this request so difficult, I wish I hadn't. And honestly, she's a late-comer," Sheldon remarked in dismay. "What if I did have her number, called her and she comes in a minute too late? If I'm already lying lifeless on the floor because of your dopey suggestion, don't blame me for your tears, missy."

"Wow," cracked Amy sarcastically. "You're the one who will be dead, missing out on the perks of physical comfort, coitus and a colorful life with a loving female species, and I'm the one crying."

"Well, of course you'd cry," he rebuts. "Penny will cry. Leonard will definitely cry ones she does. Howard, Koothrappali and Bernadette are my friends, so they'll probably cry too. And Emily…well, she's Emily. She'll cry but maybe it'll be out of joy."

"Or not. Among them, Emily might be the only person who doesn't want to kill you ever since they met you."

"Hey, my mother didn't want to kill me. And _you_ wanted to live with me."

"She's your mother. I still live in Glendale."

"Oh right. She'll go to hell if she did that. Doesn't this take you back to the good times?" Sheldon muses in a sing-song voice as he thinks of the memories he had with Amy Farrah Fowler. "I postulate a scenario, you refute it. We embark on an empowering exchange of intellectual ideas. Then, we mindlessly wander off to so many possible topics we eventually forget we were fighting."

"Sheldon, I thought we did not want to be reminded of our past. And hearing you complain most of the time in the entire duration of our dating relationship, I'm surprised you refer to them as the good times."

"Wow," Sheldon's on-point sarcastic remark echoing Amy's. "I'm the one who suffers irregular respiratory activity recalling those memories, and you're the one complaining."

Amy was out of words. But, now that she was thinking about it, Sheldon was right. She was starting to miss those 'good times'. "You had another reason," she says, shifting back to their original subject. "What is it? And it better be good because not only do I have the liberty to neglect your needs…"

"All right, all right!" Sheldon complains. "You don't have to be such a meanie."

Amy hears him sneeze and sniff at the other line. She almost wished she was there beside him. But, then, if she weren't his last resort, would he want her to be there? She doubted that.

"What is it, then?"

"Well, secondly, you told me we could be friends. When I was sick, Penny once took care of me. She was my friend and now you are, too."

Not the friendship card!

"Pretty please?" Sheldon adds.

Not that, too!

"No, Sheldon," Amy responds before she was overcome by her subconscious, needy self.

* * *

Amy stares at the looming pair of alphanumeric symbols that seemed to taunt her predicament. 4A.

She can't believe herself for being there. Well, she had driven all the way from Glendale to Pasadena. There's no going back now.

Amy knocks on the door. There was no answer.

She knocks again. No answer.

Sure, Sheldon is sick but with his hypersensitive eardrums, he'll surely be alerted of a presence.

She knocks for the last time. When no call from the inside was heard, Amy decides to leave.

 _I tried,_ she tells herself.

Just as she is about to take a step down the stairwell, her phone vibrates.

It's Sheldon.

"Yes, what is it?"

"No backsies!"

So, he heard her.

"You didn't answer, the door was locked. Did you think I would stand here all night long?"

"No," at the other end, Sheldon was rolling his eyes. "I thought you would get into Penny's apartment, get the keys by the door and open the door on my apartment."

In another time, Amy would have responded, as a neurobiologist, there was no way her brain could come to that conclusion as it did not have existing knowledge or experience that could tell her the whereabouts of the keys. But at the moment, she finds herself smiling, doing exactly what he said, and making a beeline for his room as soon as she got in.

Amy's heart sinks at the sight of Sheldon Cooper looking weak with nasal entrance as red as Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer's.

"What took you so long?" was Sheldon's condescending greeting.

"I waited to see if I could arrive in time for your death," she simply says and removes her shoulder bag. After setting it down on Sheldon's bedside table, she notices a curious little box. She was going to ask what that was but Sheldon was looking strangely at her. "How are you feeling?" she asks instead.

As she half-expected, Sheldon pulls out a clipboard with a chart monitoring his temperature, mucus color and liquid intake since eight in the morning that day. She looks at the chart and notes the gradually increasing body temperature.

"I'm sorry for the penmanship," he apologizes looking disappointed. "I have partially lost control of by nerves, therefore, unable to write down neatly."

Amy ignores his perfectionist complex and moves to check his temperature. As she did so, she stops her hand midair. "Is it okay for me to touch you?"

"Well," Sheldon's eyes darts on the floor, as they always did when he's uncomfortable or unsure. "You've held my hand, embraced me, kissed me on the lips. You even measured a mole on my back and another on my chest. I don't see why you're making such a fuss."

"I'm not making a fuss. I'm just checking if _you're_ not going to make a fuss." Instead of checking with her hand, Amy looks around for the thermometer Sheldon might have used.

As she presses the thermometer by his ear, Sheldon Cooper smiles.

"Are you smiling because I'm not touching you?"

His smile turned into a scowl. "No," he corrects her. "That's no reason to smile. One smiles because one is pleased or happy."

"Are you pleased that you're making my life harder now?"

"Well, if taking care of me makes your life harder, then yes. I suppose I could say I'm pleased," he said, smiling again.

"That would explain why you deliberately annoy people around you. I thought you were just unaware." Amy puts down the thermometer and adds the findings on his chart. "I can't believe I had always thought of it as a cute quirk," she mutters to herself, which was still audible to Sheldon.

"What are you talking about, woman?" he cried.

"Nothing," she says, dismissing the topic. "I brought some medicine. Have you taken some already?"

"Yes. I won't have to take another dose in three hours. But I haven't put on VapoRub." He reaches a little blue bottle by his bedside and gives it to her with his Cheshire-cat smile.

She hesitantly takes the bottle, remembering how he used to take care of her when she had flu, conjunctivitis, or just a made-up illness caused by missing him too much.

"I know you don't believe in the power of VapoRub as it, having witnessed it myself, only makes your temperature shoot up every time I apply it on you. But I have proven its healing effects on me ever since I learned what the contents of VapoRub are. FYI, I was five. And they're…"

"Okay, I'm putting this on you."

"…camphol, eucalyptus oil and menthol," he finishes his sentences before giddily unbuttoning his pajamas.

"Are you sure your mother had you tested?"

"Yes, do you want to see the certificate?"

"Never mind."

Amy uncaps the bottle and gently scrapes some jelly into her hands. As she applies the VapoRub on Sheldon's chest, Sheldon slowly closes his eyes.

"Sing me a song, Amy," he coos like a child.

"Do you want me to sing you Soft Kitty?" she asks, remembering the song he used to sing when she was sick.

"No," he sighs. "If you sing me Soft Kitty, I'll just be reminded of you every time someone else sings it to me. And I'll just end up crying like a baby if that happens. Just like when Bernadette brought mixed nuts on movie night. I cried watching Ghost Busters. And I cried because the ratio of her mixed nuts weren't as good as yours. Then, once, during my class in Physics, I had a student who had so much dandruff on her shoulders approach me, I had to dismiss them early because I couldn't take it. I'm grown man, Amy. Grown men don't cry."

"Did you cry when we broke up?" she asks, concerned, forgetting the comment about her dandruff.

He shrugs. "Every night for a week. Every other night for a month after that. Then, I lost count."

Amy bites her lower lip. She wants to ask him to be together again. But, he had clearly said he wanted to remain friends. So she kept her thoughts to herself.

"But you're doing okay now, aren't you?"

"Well, my temperature's rising every minute, my respiratory system is acting up, I breathe through my mouth, and you're taking care of me. So, I guess I am. Now, can you sing me a song?"

"Well, when I was a kid, my mother did sing me a song."

"Then, sing it. I wanna hear it."

Amy stares at Sheldon Lee Cooper, registering his profile into her memory as if she was just putting his image there, as she recalls her own version of Soft Kitty, to the tune of Twinkle, Little Star.

" _Little nosey red as rose,_

 _Noggin' crackin' fever grows,_

 _If you turn to ash and fall_

 _I'll collect your bones and all."_

Sheldon turns to Amy with a disdainful look. Amy immediately regrets her song choice.

"Amy," Sheldon holds her hand over his chest. "That's very comforting."

She held her other hand over his and smiled. "I'm glad you liked it."

"Though, nothing beats Soft Kitty."

Amy just smiled at that, then proceeds to button up Sheldon's pajamas and tucks him under his blanket. She sang him Soft Kitty, at his request, and when he finally closed his eyes, she stood up. When she was about to leave, he stops her.

"Amy?"

"Yes?"

"Where are you going?"

"Sheldon, it's nearly midnight. I have to get some sleep. You do, too."

"Are you going home to your apartment?" he asks, looking worried.

"No," she assures him with a pat on his cheek. "I'm going to sleep outside. I know you don't like girls in your room."

For a moment, he looks unsure. For a moment, Amy feels he was going to ask her to stay with him. She would have gladly jumped on the opportunity, but the moment passed.

Instead Sheldon lets go. "Good night, then. Don't let the bed bugs bite."

"I won't," she stands up. "I know there are no bedbugs, considering your upkeep of this apartment." She leans down and plants a quick kiss on his forehead. "Sweet dreams, cuddles."

Then, she walks out the door, leaving Sheldon wonderstruck. He thinks this new found friendship with Amy Farrah Fowler is enchanting. Unsure, yes, not being bound by a contract, yet it seemed a breath of fresh Texas air. It seemed like home.

* * *

Three hours later, Sheldon wakes with a snoot-free nose, or at least eighty percent of it, and a temperature that is much closer to a mammal's normal heat than the hot, boiling lava in Mt Kilauea. He sees Amy's shoulder bag by his bedside and remembers where she was now.

He stands up, a little bit dizzy, and goes to the living room where he finds Amy Farrah Fowler lying on the couch, head on his spot. He drinks his dose of medicine for that hour before approaching the sleeping vixen on the sofa.

"Amy," he whispers as he kneels down.

She doesn't stir. He tugs her shoulder gently this time.

"Amy."

Still nothing.

"Amy," he whispers again, this time a little bit louder. "You're in my spot."

His eidetic memory reminds him of a mental picture he painted awhile back, Amy in a Snow White costume, pretending to be in a deathlike sleep.

' _Sheldon,' she had called him. 'All Snow White needs is one little kiss to wake up.'_

 _He was busy finishing a website he made for the female students whom Leonard, he and Wolowitz managed to ensnare into getting interested in science. The website was too interesting to be put off so he decided to concentrate. At the same time, he had to submit a report on the endeavor they had taken on that day._

' _Heard you the first time,' he had said to remind her that he needn't be told twice. He couldn't afford distractions at that time._

 _However, when he was minutes away from finishing the site and the report, Amy sat up and took off the pretty red bow on her head._

' _Fine,' she angrily fired. 'I'm going home and eat donuts, you jerk. Let's see if that kills me like an apple would Snow White.'_

 _There were a lot of things he wanted to say. He wanted to tell her that an apple, even a cursed one, would not kill Snow White, only put her to sleep. Second, donuts would kill her with diabetes but an apple would not. And third, she can't stand up alive and awake like that. He still has to kiss her._

 _Before he could say all those things, she had already stormed off. Sheldon missed the first opportunity for him to initiate a kiss._

Now, as Sheldon looks at Amy, he tells himself this was his chance.

All of a sudden, Amy fell into a fit of screaming and kicking.

Drats! He forgot how she was prone to night terrors. With all her flailing, she hits him square in the nose.

Pin her down! Stroke her head! He reminds himself while comforting his injured nose.

With all the courage he could muster, Sheldon climbs atop Amy. He pins her kicking legs with her knees. He holds her hands above her head with his left hand and, with the other, reaches for her head while narrowly avoiding her sharp canine teeth.

"Awww, who's a good Amy?" he whispers while stroking her soft brown hair.

Magic worked like a push of a red button. Amy immediately seizes her flailing. But she was still murmuring incomprehensible things.

"Amy, wake up," he says, gently tapping her cheek.

"Sheldon," she replies.

"Yes?"

No answer. She was still sleeping after all.

' _All Snow White needs is one little kiss to wake up.'_

The memory echoes in his brain. With that in mind, Sheldon slowly lowered his head.

"Sheldon," she murmurs again, sending Sheldon jumping off the couch.

His heart starts racing like that Prom night when he saw Amy dressed in blue. His train of thought didn't help.

She was pretty in the blue dress. She had seen her in pink dresses before, but she was not as pretty. What if she wore a white dress? What if she wore the ring? What if he had popped the question before she broke up with him? Why had she broken up with him? She was surely disappointed. But why? He was Sheldon Cooper. He was brilliant. But she was disappointed. She looked disappointed, just like the look in his mother's face when the government called her because Sheldon tried to smuggle uranium. But he only did that because that was the only thing he could think a child could do for the advancement of science and humanity. Apparently, salivating and batting your big eyes are what they think a child should do.

Amy said something incomprehensible again, which brought Sheldon back to the present, and back to the real state of his relationship with Amy. They were friends. Friends don't kiss each other on the lips. Well, Penny did kiss Leonard one time even though they weren't dating. But that was just a ruse on Penny's dad.

 _Oh, I wish I could pretend to be Amy's boyfriend again,_ he thinks as he remembers the time when he had to pretend as Amy's boyfriend in front of her mother. _Or be her boyfriend again._

Sheldon shook the thought. He's not going to be a disappointment again. No, he excels at everything he endeavors and that must remain. One failure is enough.

Instead, he looks around the room, looking for a good spot where he could sit. His gaze keeps going back to the countenance of Amy, now peacefully wandering through the calm of slumber.

There were three reasons why he called her. He told her two. The other, he kept to himself.

Sheldon moves to lift Amy's head, before sitting on the couch and setting her down on his lap. A shift in the Cartesian coordinate system must have occurred. This was his spot, his single point of consistency, his point (0,0,0,0).

* * *

Nobody uttered a word until they were safely housed within the walls of 4B.

"I just can't believe you're married to me, Leonard," Penny chastises her husband, hands on her waist.

Leonard, who was struggling with their luggage, gives up on the load and sits on the couch. "Honey, if I wanted you to see Sheldon and Amy making out, I would have shown you the recordings on the Aquaman CCTV camera."

"You have the recordings?!" Penny shrieks with excitement.

"Ssssshhh!" Leonard hurriedly covers Penny's mouth.

Because their flight to New Jersey was delayed, Penny and Leonard had to go back to the apartment. They have originally decided to stay over at 4B. But because their deal with Sheldon scheduled them at 4A, Leonard's quite not there yet when it came to breaking Sheldon's deals and rules, and Sheldon was sick, they had decided to stay at Leonard's old apartment.

However, just as she and her husband walked in, they saw and heard the most uncharacteristic Sheldon Cooper they have ever seen. Sheldon was on all fours on the couch on top of what could only be Amy, and whispering 'Awww, who's a good Amy?'

Leonard had quickly pulled Penny out of the apartment before Sheldon's hearing noticed them.

Penny takes off Leonard's hand on her mouth. "Don't you sush me, you weird little man."

"Whom you married on purpose."

"How could you take that moment from me? I had thought something bad was happening to Amy. My best friend was screaming for goodness' sake. Who would have thought Sheldon was…"

"Okay, okay," Leonard interjects. "That's it. If you really want to see them making out, I'm letting you watch."

"Yay!" Penny cheers up and kisses Leonard on the lips. "You're the best!"

"I can't believe I begged Sheldon to give me access to the recordings for this," Leonard mutters, secretly thinking he was just going for the recording of his activities with his wife.


End file.
